I Saw Three Ships
The girls and I read Elizabeth Goudge’s I Saw Three Ships last year for Christmas, but it didn’t wow any of us. In fact, none of us even remembered it.
This year was different. It’s a short chapter book, and we read through it in a more concentrated way than we did last year, in two sittings. It charmed us.
Here’s the plot summary from the jacket:
Little Polly Flowerdew lives with her two maiden aunts, and she is absolutely sure that something special is going to happen this Christmas. She leaves her bedroom window open on Christmas Eve, just in case the three wise men decide to come visit. When she wakes up on Christmas morning, more than one miracle seems to have taken place.
The story required us to do a little digging about the English Christmas carol, which is thought to concern the three ships that allegedly arrived at Cologne Cathedral in the 12th century bearing the relics of the Magi. A British legend that Jesus visited England as a child, three kings, three ships, and perhaps even three persons of the Trinity, are suggested and layered in this little tale. So it’s a little story with big aspirations, but somehow it doesn’t topple under its freight of symbolism.
All the verses of the Christmas carol are sung in the story, and it’s printed in entirety in the back. My youngest loved singing it. There are several versions online, and this one by Sting includes all the same verses as the version in our story book (though the wording in the third stanza is ever so slightly altered).
Merry Christmas!
5 Comments
Amy @ Hope Is the Word
This story is entirely new to me, though I have wondered about the song. I hoped to read more longer stories with my girls, but it was not to be. Maybe next year!
Carrie, Reading to Know
That one sounds like a lot of fun. I like that it didn’t mean much to you last year, but that you all connected to it this year. Fun reading times.
MERRY CHRISTMAS to you, Janet!!!
Alice@Supratentorial
Thank you! I was just a Christmas caroling party where we sang this song and all wondered what it was about. No one had any idea what the three ships referred to.
Elizabeth
lovely! I should get this book out from the library! she is one of my all time fave authors! :)
Janet
I’ve had mixed feelings about some of her books, but she has such a warmth that I come back for more just the same.